


Adyaapi

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Mahabharata fics [7]
Category: Hindu Religions & Lore, Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 19:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15780780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: On Draupadi’s wedding day, her stepmother tells her that this is the moment that divides her life into before and after.On Pariksit’s wife Madravati’s wedding day, her step-grandmother-in-law tells her that this is a moment that divides her life into before and after.adyaapi (Sanskrit): henceforth, this very day, down to the present time





	Adyaapi

On Draupadi’s wedding day, as her mother braids her hair and bedecks her in jewels, she whispers, “This is the moment that divides your life into before and after. From Draupadi, beloved of Kampilya, to Rani Panchaali, wife of Arjuna.”

In the privacy of her chambers, there is no need to pretend that they do not know the identity of the mysterious Brahmin who conquered her swayamvar. Draupadi smiles at her mother’s folly with a confidence that many would mistake for smugness. She knows, with the certainty of one fireborn, that she has a destiny beyond this. Yajnaseni is a title grander than any she has held before or after her marriage, and she _knows_ with the keenest sense that this is not the defining moment, not yet.

She walks to Ekachakra, barefoot and bleeding, clad in the plainest of saris and elation in her heart. When her mother-in-law mindlessly bids her son to share his good fortune with his brothers, _this_ Draupadi knows, _this_ is the dividing moment.

By the time she gives birth to Prativindhya, she is too wise to believe in the singularity of defining moments. By then, she has seen the Pandavas’ survival revealed, weathered a succession crisis, rebuilt the insult of Khandavprastha into Indraprastha, and stood by Yudhisthira’s side during the Rajasuya Yagna. Oh, there was that terrible moment when Krishna wielded his chakra against Shishupal, but she had quickly set aside her feelings of foreboding as she saw the blood on his finger and (foolishly, she later realized) ripped her sari to bandage it.

The course of a lifetime is too complicated and unpredictable for an observer to be able to choose a single moment and say, this is where _before_ became _after._  How arrogant, how short-sighted to think that one can do so? She will teach her children that only at the end of a lifetime can one look back and think, that, _that_ was the moment everything changed.

And then the Pandavas are invited to Hastinapur.

* * *

When Yudhisthira drops his eyes, followed by Bhima and Arjuna, and then Nakul and Sahadev, when all Bhishma and Drona can do is croak out useless ditherings, when her hair is nearly yanked out of her scalp and she clenches her bloodstained sari with her teeth lest it be torn away, _then --_

_then --_

_then_

This is the moment that divides her life into then and now. The moment that draws demarcation lines in blood. Forget her birth -- _this_ is the baptism of fire, in which all her preconceptions are burned away and her rage is fortified into steel. Before, she was a queen, she was safe, she was protected, she could _trust_.

Now? Now she has been touched by her enemies and traded by her husbands. Now she relies on her own wits and her own power, bargaining and declaring.

This is the moment she leaves everything behind, more so than any after.

Not when Yudhisthira places honor above reason and accepts a second dice game. Not when they leave for the forest, when Jayadrath and Keechak attempt to force themselves upon her. When Abhimanyu’s blood soaks the earth, then Dushassan’s, Duryodhana’s, then her own sons’. When Kunti confesses, when Gandhari curses. When Pariksit is born against all odds. His survival does not divide but justifies what has come before.

On the day of Pariksit’s marriage to Madravati, she counsels her that this is a moment that changes everything. It’s an echo of what her own mother told her, lifetimes ago, except she calls it _a_ moment and not _the_ moment.

When word comes of the hunter’s arrow in Krishna’s heel, Yudhisthira bemoans that this is the moment that changes salt into dust, color into gray, and life into existence. This changes everything. This moment will be the standard against which they measure every memory -- (Her eldest husband has always had a knack for melodrama.)

Draupadi chuckles dryly, almost a cough, and the younger Pandavas cease their weeping to glance at her.

“How can this moment be the defining one,” she asks, “when it is the one that ends everything?”

Yudhisthira is the first to understand, and he smiles, something like acceptance in his eyes. Krishnaa feels her own countenance mirror his, and for the first time in a long while, she does not hear the echoes of dice rolling, but merely a delicate tranquility, sharp and crisp as mountain air.


End file.
